Parking Lot Rover Team
Timeline
Spring 2021 – Summer 2021
Students
- Bryan Bidjocka
- Liliana Diaz
- Abiria Placide
- Mariane Sanchez
- Sean-Michael Woerner
Sponsor
Christopher D. McMurrough, Ph.D
Abstract
The Parking Lot Rover is an autonomous robotic rover that has the capability of painting stripes in a parking lot. This rover is geared towards parking lot striping companies who want to reduce costs and also to any parking lot owners who want to save money from hiring these companies. This product comes equipped with the necessary components for the users to set up the rover for parking lot striping. Though this project is not directly sponsored by a company, it has the potential to be incorporated in many companies’ future investments.
Background
The current process for parking lot paint striping is lengthy and expensive. When a company is requested for a paint striping service, they first must estimate the amount of parking spaces they need to paint and the amount of manual labor to calculate the cost of the service. Most companies use a striping machine that requires someone to manually paint the stripes. This current process is inefficient, expensive, and time consuming.
An autonomous rover is capable of doing the same quality job while being much cheaper and it also does not require the same manual labor that a current standard machine needs. This allows a company to save time and resources that could be better used in other areas. A fully autonomous paint striping rover has the potential for widespread distribution where it could replace the current inefficient machines for companies worldwide.
Project Requirements
| REQ# | Requirement Description | Priority |
| 1 | Rover with Autonomous Capability | Critical |
| 2 | GPS Connectivity | Critical |
| 3 | Parking Lot Layout Verification | Critical |
| 4 | Paint Distribution | Critical |
| 5 | Bluetooth Connectivity | High |
| 6 | Parking Stripes | High |
| 7 | Firmware Updates | High |
| 8 | Sufficient Battery Life and Mileage | High |
| 9 | Charging/Replacing the Battery | High |
| 10 | Replacing Paint | High |
System Overview
To implement a solution to the problem of inaccurate and costly parking lot striping, we plan on creating an autonomous GPS rover. This rover would be only controlled by one user interface system, that would require a station that could interact with the rover. This module station will connect to a satellite signal to get an accurate read on the GPS location. This location will then be transmitted to the rover and in specific areas will disperse the paint in order to stripe accurately the parking spots. An employee could set up the location where he would like the rover to work, either through an app on a mobile device or laptop computer.
For the project, one of the main key components would be the module base station. This base station will be a key source in sending and receiving signals to the rover machine to gather specific coordinates on where and when to stripe the parking lot. This base station will incorporate some GPS functionality. This station will connect with a satellite home base, so that way it can be used at any location and not rely on one single signal. An employee may use a GUI application in order to send which coordinates they would like the rover to stripe.
The second key component for this project is the rover itself, which will receive the signal from the base station for the specific coordinates. This rover will then follow those instructions given by the station, given by the employee or user. The rover will be fully automatic, but it could still be controlled manually by a user either through an application on a mobile device or via an external remote controller.
The third component will be the paint sprayer, which will distribute the paint to stripe the parking lot. There will be a certain hardware and software manipulation that will allow to spray the paint at specific coordinates determined by the base station. It will not spray constantly in order to give space for different parking spaces.
Results
We were able to rebuild the rover and the rover can now be controlled without having to set up configurations in Mission Planner. Our team was able to integrate GPS capabilities with the rover, as this was the main focus that our sponsor required. We also created a base station (mounted on the roof of Nedderman Hall) that will be used for GNSS correction.
Future Work
The project will be taken over by another senior design team in the fall semester of 2021. The essential hardware features such as steering and remote navigation for the rover has been completed. The next team will be working on mission planning using the auto features of mission planner to design way-point mappings the rover would follow. For better accuracy the new team will have to communicate with the base station that has been set up on the roof of Nedderman hall. They will also have have to configure an RTK2GO server. If they get to the point where they are able to accurately make way-points they can then add a painting mechanism to the rover where it can begin striping parking lots.
Project Files
References
- Lant, Michael, “Software Development, Agile Methods and the Intersection of People Process and Technology”, http://michaellant.com/2010/05/18/how-to-make-your-project-not-suck/, 2010.
- Rubin, Kenneth S, Addison-Wesley Professional, “Essential Scrum: A Practical Guide to the Most Popular Agile Process,” 2012.
- U.S. Department of Defense, “DOD Sample Phase I Proposal,” http://www.acq.osd.mil/osbp/sbir/sb/resources/sample-proposals.shtml, 2011.
- Asphalt Kingdom, “Asphalt Kingdom Line Stripers”, https://www.asphaltkingdom.com/striping-machines.html,2021
- National Pavement, “Parking Lot Striping: Everything you should know”, https://nationalpavement.com/parking-lot-striping-everything-you-should-know/, 2019.
- New Stripe, “Parking Lot Striping Equipment”, https://www.newstripe.com/pavement-floor-marking/parking-lot-striping-equipment/, 2021
- Line Striping Arlington, “Parking Lot Striping Arlington”, https://www.linestripingarlington.com/, 2021
Texas Parking Lot Striping, “Texas Parking Lot Striping”, https://texasparkinglotstriping.com/, 2021
